This is a series of wisdom and mystical knowledge that will be examined... This knowledge will show the hidden teachings of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef also known as Jesus the Christ but will also include esoteric knowledge from the Mystics of all religions and philosophies...
All of these Mystics will ask you to find the ' Source of All ', and to ' Know Thyself '... Enter into the most important experience of your life...

"Selfish or limited motivations
create the illusory sense of imprisonment
and scatter seeds of further delusion.
Even genuine religious teaching
can generate narrowness of vision.
Trust only the approach
that is utterly vast and profound.

"The noble way of Mahamudra
never engages in the drama of
imprisonment and release.
The sage of Mahamudra
has absolutely no distractions,
because no war against distractions has ever been declared.

This nobility and gentleness alone,
this nonviolence of thought and action
is the traceless path of all Buddhas.
To walk this all-embracing way
is the bliss of Buddhahood."

Two of the grave and discriminative defects of the Indian methods of seeking Truth are the turning of men into Gods and the glorifying of imperfect institutions.

While it is possible for the student to learn to some extent from these sources in the East and also in the West, he must keep in mind the fact that they are helpful only to beginners, and should exercise caution in joining any of their organizations.

Our present times call for firsthand information, experience, and individual proof of the Truth, which the Quest alone offers.

Institutions and organizations, on the other hand, offer nothing, demand much, and actually impede progress. There are a very few redeeming exceptions which justify their existence, but these are not generally known.

There is no reason for anyone to feel discouraged by his weaknesses or deficiencies, or by his actions that have dissatisfied him, or by anything in life that has failed. He should forget the past that has failed him, and begin to construct and mold his future as he would wish it to be. Considering that as a branch is not separate from the bough, and the bough is not separate from the stem, so with all our limitations we are not separate from the will of the Unlimited One.

I remember a Persian verse made by my murshid which relates to the self: 'When I feel that now I can make peace with my self, it finds time to prepare another attack.' That is our condition. We think that our little faults, since they are small, are of no consequence; or we do not even think of them at all. But every little fault is a flag for the little self, for its own dominion. In this way battling makes man the sovereign of the kingdom of God. Very few can realize the great power in battling with and conquering the self.

But what does man generally do? He says, 'My poor self, it has to withstand the conflicts of this world; should I also battle with this self?' So he surrenders his kingdom to his little self, depriving himself of the divine power that is in the heart of man. There is in man a false self and a real self. The real self contains the eternal; the false self contains the mortal. The real self has wisdom; the false self ignorance. The real self can rise to perfection; the false self ends in limitation. The real self has all good, the false self is productive of all evil. One can see both in oneself: God and the other one. By conquering the other one, one realizes God. This other power has been called Satan; but is it a power? In reality it is not. It is and it is not. It is a shadow. We see shadow and yet it is nothing. We should realize that this false self has no existence of its own. As soon as the soul has risen above the false self, it begins to realize its nobility.

Student: I have been asking and asking "Who am I?"until I feel there is just no answer to this question.

Roshi: You won't find an entity called "I".
Student[heatedly]: Then why am I asking the question!?

Roshi : Because in your present state you can't help yourself. The
ordinary person is forever asking Why? or What? or Who?
There are many koans in which a monk asks "What is the Buddha?" or " Why did Bodhidharma come from India to China?" The aim of the master' s response is to break the deluded mind so
that he can realize his question is an abstraction.

Student: I have been reading the English translation of the Bassui
letters during your morning lecture, as you suggested I do. At one point Bassui says: " Who is the Master chat moves the hands?'"

Roshi: There is no real answer to Who? What? or Why? Why is sugar sweet?
Sugar is sugar.
Sugar!
You are you!"

Student: All right, I am I- I accept that. Isn't this enough? What moreneed I do? Why must I keep struggling with this question?

Roshi: Because this understanding is external to you, you don' t
really know what you mean by " I am I". You must come up against this question with the force of a bomb, and all your intellectual notions and ideas must be annihilated. The only way to resolve this question is to come to the explosive inner realization that everything is [ultimately reducible to] Nothing.
If your understanding is merely theoretical, you will forever ask Who? What? and Why?

And there was nothing I could do. Finally, I faced the last thing that I ever wanted to face—I think the last thing anybody ever wants to face—and that is absolute, utter, bone-crushing defeat. This is something quite different than feeling despair or despondence. When we feel despair and despondence, we haven't been completely defeated yet, which means we haven't entirely stopped. Something in us is still struggling against what is.

But in that moment where I realized there was literally nothing I could do, everything changed. All of a sudden, my view of everything shifted. Almost like flipping over a card or a coin, everything that I ever thought or felt, everything that I could remember, everything in that moment literally disappeared. I was finally alone. And in this aloneness, I had no idea what I was, or where I was, or what was happening. All I knew was that I had hit the end of some imaginary road. I'd come to some brick wall and found myself suddenly on the other side of it, where the brick wall actually disappeared. And then this great revela­tion occurred where I realized that I was both nothing and everything, simultaneously.

As soon as that realization came, I started to laugh. I thought, "My God! I've been searching for this for years, meditating for thousands of hours, writing dozens of notebooks—all this searching and all this struggle." It maysound like a short period of time—four years is a relatively short period of time—but when you're in your twenties, four years seems like forever. So in that moment I laughed, because I realized that what I was searching for was always right here, that the enlightenment for which I was seeking was literally the space that I existed in. All along I hadn't ever been far from the end of suffering. It had been an open door from the very beginning, from the first breath that I ever took.

"There's a sensation that comes along from time to time. One experiences, 'I'm everything. I'm the entire universe walking on these legs, seeing from these eyes.'

And then, 'How did I get in HERE?'

It's the most miraculous thing. The entire infinite, eternal source and goal and content of all that is, looking out from here, seeing from this vantage point.

That's the glory of that poor little ego that gets kicked around so much. That's why the little 'me' is so pivotal in this journey.

The little ego, the little 'me,' they're the horses, the poor, ignorant, plodding beasts of burden that carry consciousness from abstraction, through materialization and embodiment, through the darkness of dense matter, through all the lessons and laborsand tribulations of lifetimes of striving, and then at last, to reawakening, reconnecting back to infinity.

That EMBODIED infinity is now bigger than simple, primordial infinity from which individuality emerged, because it includes individuality AND universality.

Individuality somehow magically containing, reflecting, embodying universality so universality can dance, can play, can exult in finding itself, rediscovering itself again and again. Individuality finds its way home, all the way home, on the backs of those unfailingly loyal beasts of burden so many gratuitously malign."

Introduction: The fundamental knowledge is Atman is Brahman. The Atman being the "Self" and Brahman means the "All Soul" or the Universal Consciousness. Vedas speak of mystical union as the realization that Atman is Brahman.

Advaita is a Sanskrit word that literally means "not two". Modern interpretation of Advaita is sometimes presented as "Nonduality" and even revised as the end of the Vedas or "Nonduality beyond knowledge." Another name for the study of Advaita is Jnani (knowledge) Yoga. In the 20th century, modern Advaita masters Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj broke away from the traditional, scripture driven path and they spoke directly from their experience.

Among the variety of reinterpretations, to find the most common understanding, I searched Encyclopædia Britannica:

7th-century thinker Gaudapada, author of the
Mandukya-karika, argues that there is no duality; the
mind, awake or dreaming, moves through maya
("illusion"); and only nonduality (advaita) is the
final truth. This truth is concealed by the ignorance
of illusion. There is no becoming, either of a thing
by itself or of a thing out of some other thing. There
is ultimately no individual self or soul (jiva), only
the atman (all-soul).

The medieval Indian philosopher Sankara, (700?-750?),
builds further on Gaudapada's foundation, principally
in his commentary on the Vedanta-sutras, the
Sari-raka-mimamsa-bhasya ("Commentary on the Study of
the Self ").

Sankara in his philosophy does not start
from the empirical world with logical analysis but,
rather, directly from the absolute (Brahman). If
interpreted correctly, he argues, the Upanisads teach
the nature of Brahman. In making this argument, he
develops a complete epistemology to account for the
human error in taking the phenomenal world for real.

Fundamental for Sankara is the tenet that the Brahman
is real and the world is unreal. Any change, duality,
or plurality is an illusion. The self is nothing but
Brahman. Insight into this identity results in
spiritual release. Brahman is outside time, space, and
causality, which are simply forms of empirical
experience. No distinction in Brahman or from Brahman
is possible.

Falsehood, whatever its apparent success, has its limitations and its end. For at every step the false person will feel falseness; and with every step a person takes towards falsehood, he will feel his feet growing heavier and heavier when he encounters the truth, while those who walk towards the truth will feel their feet becoming lighter with every step they take.

Truth is the divine element in man. Truth is every soul's seeking. Therefore as soon as the clouds of illusion are scattered, that which man now begins to see is nothing but the truth which has been there all the time. He finds that the truth was never absent; it was only covered by clouds of illusion.

By changing his own nature, by making himself more truthful, he disperses the clouds of falsehood within and without, and begins to see life as it really is both inwardly and outwardly. From this time onwards, the meaning of religion becomes clear. One begins to understand what the great teachers have taught. Then one becomes tolerant to the various religions. Nothing seems strange any more. Nothing surprises. For now one begins to know the innermost nature of man; one sees the cause behind every action.

People speak about truth and falsehood, but once the mystic has reached the truth, all is truth to him; then everything is a phenomenon of truth, a picture of truth. For instance, a person looking at a picture may distinguish light and shade, but another instead of speaking of light and shade, will say, 'This is a portrait of so and so, it is a very good picture, exactly like him.' Truth is like this; and so to a mystic the whole of life is a picture of the divine Beloved.

When you fully experience any negative emotion, with no story, it instantaneously ceases to be. If you think you are fully experiencing an emotion and it remains quite intense, then recognize that there is still some story being told about it -- how big it is, how you will never be able to get rid of it, how it will always come back, how dangerous it is to experience it.

Whatever the story of the moment may be, the possibilities of postponing direct experience are endless.

For instance, when you are irritated, the usual tendency is to do something to get rid of the irritation or to place blame either on yourself or someone or something else as the cause of the irritation. Then the storylines around irritation begin to develop.

It is actually possible to do nothing with the irritation, to not push it out of awareness or try to get rid of it, but to directly experience it. In the moment that irritation arises, it is possible to simply be completely, totally, and freely irritated, without expressing it or repressing it.

At the end of his long life of selfless teaching, the Buddha said that you must strive on the path yourself—the Awakened Ones only point the way. Like the Buddha, all genuine mystics will tell you that the ultimate authority and touchstone of truth is not any scriptures or dogmas or teachers, but your own deepest experience.

“Don’t take my word for it,” they will say, “find out for yourself!” Just as a scientist tests hypotheses using experiments, so you should test the teachings in the laboratory of your life using spiritual practices.

It makes sense that you should be your own ultimate authority, because it is your own true nature that you must discover and know. As the oracle at Delphi commands: “know thyself.” And as Jesus instructs: “examine yourself, and learn who you are, how you exist, and what will become of you” (Jesus, Book of Thomas).

The reason the genuine mystic directs your attention inward to seek your own true nature is because, as Jesus says, “He who has not known himself does not know anything, but he who has known himself has also known the depth of all” (Jesus, Book of Thomas). And Rumi tells you: “It’s you yourself that hide your own treasure” (Rumi, Mathnawi). So the genuine mystic will always point you to yourself, to discover the depths of your own true nature.

The mystical injunction to know yourself and look to yourself as your own ultimate authority, however, does not mean that teachers and teachings have no value in the mystical path. The point is that they only show the way, as the Buddha says. If you invest a particular teaching or teacher with ultimate truth, you will be implicitly separating yourself from the truth, and you will fail to realize the truth of your own nature.

In the end, however, when you realize that the teachings and teachers—and indeed the entire world—is not separate from you, then you will see that your entire life is the truth of your own deepest being revealing itself to itself. Thus, to see truth in nothing reveals the truth in everything...

"For enlightenment you must have deep faith. You must profoundly believe what the Buddha and the Patriarchs from their own first-hand experience declared to be true,
namely, that everything, ourselves included, intrinsically is Buddha- nature; that like a circle, which can't be added to or subtracted from, this Self-nature lacks nothing, it is complete, perfect. . . .

Now, why if we have the flawless Buddha-nature are we not aware of it? Why if everything in essence is Wisdom and Purity itself is there so much ignorance and suffering in the world? , ... This is the 'doubt-mass' which must be dispersed. . . .

Only if you deeply believe that the Buddha was neither a fool nor a liar when he a all inherently Whole and Self-sufficient, can you tirelessly probe your heart and mind for the solution to this paradox," ...

If we really look, surely we can see we are built for loving. We are built open, as capacity for the other one.

If one experiences oneself as space for the other, one listens, one looks, one attends to the other. And the other one feels attended to, feels entertained and valued, because after all if you have nothing where you are, no face, no thing at all, that other one is doing you a marvelous service of supplying you with this fascinating scene.

It means that I'm going to let others be what they are, because space has no way of manipulating and using and exploiting them. Space is very patient, very hospitable.

This is a totally different thing from the imagined basis of our personal relationships, which is a symmetrical one. In a certain sense it is the very basis of loving.

"It is the mercy of my true Guru that has made me to know the unknown;
I have learned from Him how to walk without feet,
to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to drink without mouth, to fly without wings;

I have brought my love and my meditation into the land where there is no sun and moon, nor day and night.

Without eating, I have tasted of the sweetness of nectar; and without water, I have quenched my thirst.

Where there is the response of delight, there is the fullness of joy.

Before whom can that joy be uttered?

Kabir says: 'The Guru is great beyond words, and great is the good fortune of the disciple.'"

The strange thing about suffering is that by taking it on you go through to the underlying peace that passes understanding. Some people seem to suggest that when you see Who you are, there is no more suffering. On the contrary. In a way, it's the exact opposite of that. You take it all on.

You take on the pain of creation, not only human suffering but the whole tragic history of the world and the suffering of other centuries -- not because you are a saint or a good person. You have no option. That's the way you are made, and that's the way through.

I'm not saying, mind you, that a life consciously lived from its true Center will be safe or painless, easy or consistently joyful. Real adventure is made of sterner stuff. You embrace the suffering of the world no less than its splendor and its thrill.

The real joy, the joy that casts no shadow and knows no variation, has come through the fire. You could say that the remedy for suffering is homeopathic.

Finally, everything is gone, including me and you. What remains is a pure consciousness.
It is not that you are plugged into it, you are no more.

The dispersion is so intimate and so ultimate that first your personality has to disappear, then your
individuality has to disappear, then what remains is pure existence. It makes one feel a little worried
and concerned, because you don’t know the experience of not being.

Just think for a moment.... Before this life you were not. Was there any trouble? Any anxiety?
After this life you will not be again. What is the fear? There will be silence and peace, in the same
space where anxiety, tensions and anguishes flourished. They all will have melted just the way a
dewdrop disappears into the ocean.

Hence, Zen does not teach you self-realization. Self-realization is a much lower goal. Zen teaches
you the ultimate: no-self realization, or realizing that disappearing into the whole is the final peace.

Your very being is an anxiety. At whatever level you are, some anxiety will remain. You are anxiety,
and if you want anxiety to disappear, you have to be ready to disappear yourself.

The first thing to remember is that when I say witness, in the beginning you witness things of the
body, of the mind, of the heart, emotions, thoughts... layer upon layer you go on witnessing. And
finally, you find just a pure mirror, the witness itself. I call it a pure mirror because it is witnessing
nothing. This nothingness is your very nature.

Out of this nothingness arises everything, and into this nothingness dissolves everything. And if you
are ready to be nothing – even while you are alive – your life will have a flavor of peace, silence, and
grace.

All your educational systems and all your cultural beliefs, force you to be ambitious, to be somebody.
But to be somebody means creating anxieties in a silent pool, ripples and waves. The greater the
ambition, the more tidal is the wave of anxiety. You can become almost insane desiring. Trying to
be somebody, you are trying the impossible, because basically you are nobody.

Zen has an absolutely unique perception into the nothingness of everyone. It does not teach you
any ambition, it does not teach you to be someone else. It simply wants you to know that in the
deepest part of your being you are still nothing, you are still carrying the original purity which is not
even contaminated by an idea of ”I.”

So while you are witnessing, you say, ”I have experienced nothing.” If you have experienced nothing,
you should not be there. Experiencing nothing means you are not, nothing is – simply waves in the
water, coming and going.

It is not that you witness nothing. You are creating another small ”I,” but it contains the whole world
of ambitions. Experiencing nothing simply means you are not. And there comes a tremendous joy,
because the whole energy that was involved in anxieties and desires and tensions, is released in a
dance, in a blissfulness, in a silence, in a tremendous insight, but it does not belong to any ”I” – a
pure white cloud without any roots, floating in freedom, without any reason and without any direction.
The whole existence has become its home. It no longer separates itself. This inseparation is the
ultimate blossoming of buddhahood. To know that you are not is the greatest knowing.

You ask in your question if there is no one who perceives all this. That no one is not yet no one if
it perceives anything. When there is nothing left, there is no perceiver, everything is dissolved into
existence.

Zen is the only existential religion in the world. Every religion thrives on your desire to be separate,
to be individual, to be special, to be self-realized, to be a saint. Those are all cowardly desires.

"The original attitude of the American Indian toward the Eternal, the 'Great Mystery' that surrounds and embraces us, was as simple as it was exalted. To him it was the supreme conception, bringing with it the fullest measure of joy and satisfaction possible in this life.

"The worship of the 'Great Mystery' was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

"There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature. Being a natural man, the Indian was intensely poetical. He would deem it sacrilege to build a house for Him who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky! He who enrobes Himself in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire, He who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth His spirit upon aromatic southern airs, whose war-canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas -- He needs no lesser cathedral!

"That solitary communion with the Unseen which was the highest expression of our religious life is partly described in the word bambeday, literally 'mysterious feeling,' which has been variously translated 'fasting' and 'dreaming.' It may better be interpreted as 'consciousness of the divine'."

This whole world of delusion is nothing but a shadow caused by the mind.

It is simply the mind clouded over by impure desires, and impervious to wisdom, that obstinately persists in thinking of “me” and “mine.”

The mind conjures up multifarious forms just as a skillful painter creates pictures of various worlds. There is nothing in the world that is not mind-created.

It is from ignorance and greed that the world of delusion is born, and all the vast complexity of coordinating causes and conditions exists within the mind and nowhere else.

Both life and death arise from the mind and exist within the mind. Hence, when the mind that concerns itself with life and death passes on, the world of life and death passes with it.

An unenlightened life rises from a mind that is bewildered by its own world of delusion. If we learn that there is no world of delusion outside the mind, the bewildered mind becomes clear; and because we cease to create impure surroundings, we attain Enlightenment.

The first yields as its fruit that the world is but an idea, and this stage has been reached from the metaphysical end by thinkers such as Bishop Berkeley, and nearly reached from the scientific end by such a man as Eddington.

The second stage involves the study of the three states, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, and yields as its fruit the truth that ideas are transitory emanations out of their permanent cause, consciousness.

The third stage is the most difficult, for it requires analysis of the nature of time, space, and causation, plus successful practice of yoga. It yields as its fruit the sense of Reality as something eternally abiding with one..

Because you are the Spirit of God appearing as flesh you have the assurance that in your flesh you shall see God.

As we listen and feel the Love expressed in the Voice of another we are reminded that the Spiritual Source of this Love is from the All Loving Father Consciousness, our Creator.

It is Love that has made us what we are and it is Love that shall lead wherever we are destined to go.

As the conditions in our life and the world change, we can rest safely in Divine Love, the Divine Presence and relax that our Life is in the hands of the Creator, who Loves us beyond anything we can imagine in this world.

We understand that in this world everything constantly changes but in the Infinite Invisible it is the same yesterday, today and always.

As soon as you recognise your true nature as the unchanging
Awareness and confirm your position as That itself, the unchanging
One, it won’t matter anymore what the psychological, personal mind
is saying.

Its play and presence will become distant, like looking at the moon
in full daylight.

The more spiritually aware you become, the more sentimentality falls away and transforms your experience of loving. The experience of love does become less personal and more universal. This does not mean that you necessarily lose the poignant love you have your for children and loved ones, but it does not have the same stickiness and identification surrounding it. In this sense there is a natural quality of detachment from the negativity of ego and ego’s attachment to drama and suffering.

One can, however, become attached to the transcendent state of detachment (now there’s a paradox). The symptom of this happening is when you begin to feel apart from, or separate from others in such a way that your detached transcendence becomes a barrier to being truly present. This is actually a false transcendence, a defense against the challenges of life and relating in an authentic way.
In the end, everything is revealed to be a seamless unity, and life is experienced as an intimacy with all of existence. True detachment is absolute intimacy.

Plotinus, the celebrated mystic, comes nearest in his views to the Vedanta philosophy, and is practically in full agreement with the Eastern sages, both in his theory and his methodology. His system is called Neoplatonism, as it consummates the philosophy of Plato in a highly developed mysticism. To Plotinus, God or the Absolute is the All. The diversities of the world are grounded in the Absolute, though the Absolute is above all contradictions and differences. It is the first causeless Cause, and the world emanates from It as an overflow of its Perfection. We cannot define God, for definition is limitation to certain attributes. All logical, ethical and aesthetic principles, truth, goodness and beauty, are incapable of representing Him in His true greatness. Nothing can be said of the essential Reality of God, and what we can give at the most is a negative description of His Being. He is beyond being and non-being, beyond all concepts, notions and perceptions. He is above thinking, feeling and willing, above subject and object, above all conceivable principles and categories. He cannot even be called a Self-conscious Being, for this implies duality. He is the Thinker and the Thought, and also what is Thought. He is everything. He alone is.

This is nothing short of the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara. Only the view that the world is an overflow of the Perfection of God is peculiar to Plotinus. For, to the Vedanta, there is no such overflow; there is, to it, only the Absolute, and the world is its appearance; not an emanation from or an overflow of its being. This is the position, in spite of the acceptance of a relativistic creation of the Universe from the Absolute, as adumbrated in the Upanishads. For Plotinus the world is neither the creation of God nor an evolute from Him, but just an emanation. Plotinus, no doubt, takes care to see that this emanation does not in any way affect the Perfection of God. Plotinus is not advocating the parinamavada or the transformation theory of some of the Indian schools. God does not become the world by modification or transformation of Himself. He is ever what He is and the emanation is something like that of light from the sun. God never gets lost or exhausted in the world. Plotinus is thus free from the charge of propounding a pantheism. God is both transcendent and immanent. The world originates, subsists and finally merges in God. The Thought of God and the Object of this Thought are one and the same, and the world is God's Thought. God's Thought is merely the activity of His own being; it is the immediate, instantaneous, all-comprehending Essence of pure Consciousness, direct and intuitive, knowing everything at one stroke, and transcending the dualistic categories of relative reason, which functions through a succession of ideas.

Plotinus introduces into his system the Ideas of Plato, which are the archetypes of all things in the universe, and which are thoughts in the Mind of God. Only Plotinus would rise above Plato in not making God's Thought dependent on the ideas. For God is absolutely independent. Rather Plotinus makes the Platonic Ideas what the ideative processes are in the Ishvara of the Vedanta. The whole world is for Plotinus what the Vedanta means by ishvara-srishti, or cosmic manifestation, as distinguished from jiva-srishti or individual imagination.

God's Universal Thought, which we may compare to the Creative Will of Ishvara, manifests the World-Soul in the second stage of emanation. This World-Soul has some of the characteristics of Hiranyagarbha, and while it is rooted in the pure Divine Thought, and possesses its characteristics, it has a tendency towards bringing order in the sense-world. When it acts in the sense-world, it becomes the Soul of the physical world. The World-Soul has an eternal aspect as rooted in pure Thought, and a relative aspect as animating the phenomena of Nature and subject to temporal division. The World-Soul produces matter and acts on it as its animating principle.

The theory is strikingly similar to the Vedanta, excepting, of course, the several technical concepts which are peculiar only to Greek thought. But matter for Plotinus is the principle of evil. In the Vedanta, however, matter is an appearance of God Himself, and it becomes evil only when it excites and feeds the passions of the individual. Else it is a phase of the body of Ishvara, worthy of adoration. Evil is not a cosmic principle for the Vedanta; evil exists only for the individuals, and it is to be attributed to their ignorance of the true nature of things.

Plotinus also refers to the Vedanta conception of jiva-srishti, when he says that the souls contained in the World-Soul, as its ideas, act on matter and give it a sensuous character. Plotinus, however, is not very clear in his assigning to these souls the function of creating matter and of acting on matter. When he says that they are beyond space and produce matter we have to take them as ideas in the World-Soul, which manifest the physical universe and which are all held together in the unified intelligence of the World-Soul. When they are said to give matter a sensuous image, they may be considered to have undergone division as individuals which act on the objects of the world in sense-perception. For, creating matter and making it a sense-object cannot be the function of the soul in one and the same condition of its consciousness; the one is trans-empirical, and the other empirical. The former may create division through space, time and objectivity, but does not necessarily render them sensuous. Plotinus regards the appearances of the World-Soul, matter and its division into sense-objects as simultaneous processes, distinguishable only in imagination or thought. Here, again, he concurs with the cosmology of the Vedanta.

The system of Plotinus rises to lofty heights and takes creation beyond time, with no beginning and not originating in any fiat of the Divine Will. Plotinus has in him, however, aspects of the Samkhya when he says that the world is eternal in spite of its outward changes. He has also elements of the bhedabheda doctrine of difference-in-non-difference, and he is not always a consistent non-dualist. These have, however, to be regarded as mere concessions to occasional descents in the philosopher's thought, or as indications of an attempt to present to the world different aspects of the one Reality.

The essential nature of the soul, Plotinus holds, is freedom and eternal existence. It is a part of the World-Soul, and, as in the Vedanta the bondage of the soul is simultaneous with the creation of the diversity of the world by Ishvara and is actually occasioned by the Jiva itself by its passions, so in Plotinus the individual soul gets bound by its sensuality, consequent upon the manifestation of matter by the World-Soul. The blessedness of the soul is in its turning towards God, in its contemplation of the Real, by freeing itself from sensuality. The Goal of life is the realisation of God or the Absolute-Intelligence. This is possible through a tremendous discipline of the soul, by abandoning attachments to the body and bodily connections, and by contemplating on the Eternal. The soul, in the beatific vision obtained in ecstasy, attains communion with the Real. Ecstasy is beyond contemplation and is akin to the samadhi of the Yoga and the Vedanta. Plotinus is one of the very few mystics with whom the Vedanta would have the greatest sympathy; in both we find the transfiguring element of unconditioned devotion to the Absolute. Plotinus was a great sage and is said to have been blessed with the beatific vision of the Absolute several times in his life. It is the opinion of some scholars that the strikingly Oriental element in Plotinus is due to his having gained the wisdom of India while he was accompanying the Emperor Gordian in his campaign in the East.
Studies In Comparative Philosophy
by Swami Krishnananda

Plotinus

The flashes of insight in Plotinus are superb: "There everything is transparent, nothing dark, nothing resistant; every being is lucid to every other, in breadth and depth; light runs through light. And each of them contains all within itself, and at the same time sees all in every other, so that everywhere there is all, all is all, and each all, and infinite the glory. Each of them is great; the small is great: the sun, there, is all the stars, and every star again is all the stars and sun. While some one manner of being is dominant in each, all are mirrored in every other." "In this Intelligible World, every thing is transparent. No shadow limits vision. All the essences see each other and interpenetrate each other in the most intimate depth of their nature. Light everywhere meets light. Every being contains within itself the entire Intelligible World, and also beholds it entire in every particular being... There abides pure movement; for He who produces movement, not being foreign to it, does not disturb it in its production. Rest is perfect, because it is not mingled with any principle of disturbance. The Beautiful is completely beautiful there, because it does not dwell in that which is not beautiful." "To have seen that vision is reason no longer. It is more than reason, before reason, and after reason, as also is the vision which is seen. And perhaps we should not here speak of sight; for that which is seen if we must needs speak of seer and seen as two and not one is not discerned by the seer, nor perceived by him as a second thing. Therefore this vision is hard to tell of; for how can a man describe as other than himself that which, when he discerned it, seemed not other, but one with himself indeed?" (Enneads, V. 8; VI. 9, 10).

Who can afford to miss noticing the similarity, nay, identity of these passages with the magnificent proclamations of Sage Yajnavalkya as recorded in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Ch. III, IV)?

"The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity; the feeling of shame and dislike is the beginning of righteousness; the feeling of deference and compliance is the beginning of propriety; and the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

"Men have these Four Beginnings just as they have their four limbs. Having these Four Beginnings, but saying that they cannot develop them is to destroy themselves."

Tame the mind. This is the greatest challenge before you. It rushes here and there, swifter than the wind, more slippery than water. If you can arrest the flights of the mind to your will, happiness will be assured to you.

The wise man takes great care to guard his thoughts. They are very subtle, very difficult to perceive and slip out of control at the tinniest opportunity. A well guarded mind brings happiness.

The earnest person is like fire. Fire burns away everything big or small. The Greatest man and the smallest are equally consumed by fire. The fire of earnestness demolishes all the vanities, passions and terrors of life.

Lamaas come from India to see Jesus. He listens to the teachings of John at Salim. John tells him of the divine mission of Jesus. Lamaas finds Jesus at the Jordan. The masters recognise each other.

LAMAAS, priest of Brahm, who was a friend of Jesus when he was in the temple of Jagannath, had heard of Jesus and his mighty works in many lands; and he had left his home and come to Palestine in search of him. 2 And as he journeyed towards Jerusalem he heard of John, the harbinger, who was esteemed a prophet of the living God.

3 Lamaas found the harbinger at Salim Springs; for many days he was a silent listener to the pungent truths he taught. 4 And he was present when the Pharisee told John of Jesus and his mighty works 5 He heard the answer of the harbinger; heard him bless the name of Jesus; whom he called the Christ. 6 And then he spoke to John; he said, Pray tell me more about this Jesus whom you call the Christ. 7 And John replied, this Jesus is the love of God made manifest. 8 Lo, men are living on the lower planes-- the planes of greed and selfishness; for self they fight; they conquer with the sword. 9 In every land the strong enslave and kill the weak. All kingdoms rise by force of arms; for force is king.

10 This Jesus comes to overthrow this iron rule of force, and seat Love on the throne of power. 11 And Jesus fears no man. He preaches boldly in the courts of kings, and everywhere, that victories won by force of arms are crimes; 12 That every worthy end may be attained by gentleness and love just as the Prince of Peace, Melchisedec,the priest of God, won gallant victories in war without the shedding of a drop of blood. 13 You ask where are the temples of the Christ? He ministers at shrines not made with hands; his temples are the hearts of holy men who are prepared to see the king. 14 The groves of nature are his synagogues; his forum is the world. 15 He has no priests dressed up in puppet style to be admired by men; for every son of man is priest of Love.

16 When man has purified his heart by faith, he needs no middle man to intercede. 17 He is on friendly terms with God; is not afraid of him, and he is able, and is bold enough, to lay his body on the altar of the Lord. 18 Thus every man is priest, and is himself a living sacrifice. 19 You need not seek the Christ, for when your heart is purified the Christ will come, and will abide with you for evermore. 20 And then Lamaas journeyed on; he came to Jesus as he taught beside the ford. 21 And Jesus said, Behold the Star of India! 22 Lamaas said, Behold the Sun of Righteousness! And he confessed his faith in Christ, and followed him.

There is one aspect of free will allowed, though: the freedom to think you have free will. But this in no way changes the actual truth that you are simply not the doer. You are being done at every moment by Source.

You, don't exist as separate from Source except in your fantasy of separation. There is no you as "me." There is only Consciousness as "I AM" in appearance and "I - I" at rest.

Your efforts to change life from what it is --- as is, into something different are futile. You are headed down the path of destiny that was laid out at the moment of your conception. If you accomplish some planned goal in your life, it is a coincidence because the plan was already established by Grace and Destiny. It happened in spite of you and not because of you. Source is very cleverly keeping you confused about who's in charge here.

Once you awaken and it sinks in that all there is, is Consciousness, and you as the "me" are not the doer, then only one course of nonaction remains open for you to relax into -- that is, just be. Do nothing -- understanding is all!

The Good is beyond-beautiful, beyond the Highest, holding kingly state in the Intellectual-Cosmos, that sphere constituted by a Principle wholly unlike what is known as Intelligence in us.

Our intelligence is nourished on the propositions of logic, is skilled in following discussions, works by reasonings, examines links of demonstration, and comes to know the world of Being also by the steps of logical process, having no prior grasp of Reality but remaining empty, all Intelligence though it be, until it has put itself to school.

"'Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland': this is the soundest counsel. But what is this flight? How are we to gain the open sea? For Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from the sorceries of Circe or Calypso- not content to linger for all the pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling his days.

"The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is The Father.

"What then is our course, what the manner of our flight?

This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use."

Dharma practice whether Dzogchen, Mahamudra or Zen is not about becoming an improved version of who you believe yourself to be. It's also NOT about becoming more accepting, more forgiving, more kind, more compassionate and gradually free of suffering.

Instead, that "self" that would like to acquire those positive character traits; will vanish or disappear when the mind suddenly ceases projecting that subconscious karmic self.

What remains when the "illusion" of independent selfhood drops away, when the central reference point of "me" drops away suddenly; what remains is discovered to embody all those positive characteristics organically and intrinsically. These are all qualities of our True Self that require no development or cultivating.

Real Dharma creates an inner environment of clarity in which the subconscious mind sees its own foolishness and suddenly ceases projecting the karmic "me" hallucination. That is the fundamental fruit or result necessary for the termination of suffering and the actualization of our intrinsic Buddha qualities.

Otherwise the mind is just endlessly reshaping or refurbishing the same old ancient karmic self in hopes that things will gradually get better for "me".

What we know as Being, the first sequent upon The One, advanced a little outward, so to speak, then chose to go no further, turned inward again and comes to rest and is now the reality and hearth (ousia and hestia) of the universe.

Pressing (with the rough breathing) on the word for Being (on) we have the word for One (hen), an indication that in our very form of speech we tell, as far as may be, that Being (the weaker) is that which proceeds from (the stronger,) The One.

Thus both the thing that comes to be and Being itself are carriers of a copy, since they are outflows from the power of The Primal One:

the Soul sees and in its emotion tries to represent what it sees and breaks into speech ‘on—einai—ousia—hestia’ (Existent; Existence; Essence; Hestia or Hearth), sounds which labour to express the essential nature of the being produced by the travail of the utterer and so to represent, as far as sounds may, the origin of reality.

Just as the path of return from body-ruled intellect to divine intuition is necessarily a slow one, so the descent into matter of man's originally pure mind was also a slow process.

The "Fall" was no sudden event; it was a gradual entanglement that increased through the ages. Pure consciousness--the Overself--is required even for the intellect's materialistic operations.

We may say, therefore, that the Overself has never been really lost, for it is feeding the intellect with necessary life. All this has been going on for untold ages.

At first man possessed only a subtle body for a long period; but later, as his intellect continued more outward bent than before, the material body accreted to him. This curious position has arisen where intellect cannot indeed function in the absence of the Overself, yet deceptively arrogates to itself the supremacy of man's being.

Pretending to guide and protect man, it is itself rebelliously and egotistically blind to the guidance of the Overself, yet enjoys the protection of the latter. The intellectual ego-self is thus propped up by the Overself and would collapse without it, but pretends to be self-sufficing.

I am not so sure that there is some kind of abstract "perfect enlightenment" that brings an absolute end to all human dysfunction on absolutely every level of experience.

Ajahn Chaa, the great Thai forest meditation master used to always say,

"if you let go a little, you will be a little free. If you let go more, you will be more free. If you let go a lot, you will be a lot more free. And if you let go completely, you will be completely free..."

Theoretically at least, someone could let go completely, but does that ever happen in any other context than hagiographical stories of the lives of saints or sages or founders of religions? I don't know about you and I certainly don't know for sure myself, but it is a question that arises for me anyway!

"Perfect enlightenment" seems like a pretty abstract concept to me. My sense is that the reality is more on a kind of continuum of clarity that can be more or less complete, but is never totally complete.

Concern, empathy, compassion, and ‘just love in the heart’ should always burn for whoever you love active or not in your life at the moment. Real love for another, and yourself, is always with you wherever life brings you. There is no conflict in feeling deep love for more than one person, either in the ‘live moment’ or in the past while loving another present in the moment. Love is like the air, wherever it can seep in, it does, even if invisible to the human eye.

Love can be a confusing phenomenon in that when you feel you love another, you do and at the same time it is you loving yourself. Love is the air, and in the air all around. It goes noticeably where the heart and mind is open without limitations. Loyalty is steadfast and always there if it’s pure, especially from the heart. Love is not unkind when it walks away from a commitment in time that has passed. Love follows the healthy mind and heart to the far corners of the earth, and these days, into the far off space.

Loyalty is just a word, but automatically comes where love is and has been regardless of identifying with the word. Loyalty is a devotion that always is ready to express compassion. The foundation stones for a balanced life are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. Loyalty begins in the heart and is confirmed by the mind. When love seems to have gone astray, real love always remains loyal to compassion and communication.

Loyalty is usually the perception of someone else experiencing the feeling of your expected confirmation on some level of what they were led to believe. In fact, the subject of loyalty isn’t a question in the mind and heart of someone who is coming from an aware, higher sense of being. It’s a choiceless choice that is part of your nature. Receptivity is always within to be responsive in a compassionate manner.

The happiness of our life depends upon the quality of our thoughts, but the quality of our thought depends significantly on the people we have in our life. Those who live in awareness in connection to their heart are always behind the doors of time awaiting to greet you with a warm welcome. Love has full loyalty within it! Let go of the past and grab the moment as if there is nothing else! Love and loyalty always keeps the door of friendship open for today and yesterday’s love.

As we put off 'mortality' in each of our meditations, by
standing still, letting the mind see that we are not joining
with its thoughts just now; by relaxing from taking thought,
by opening that inner door, and simply remaining receptive;

we listen, we wait, we observe, we are quietly aware; this
is the vacuum into which the Living Spirit flows and reveals
Itself as a Presence in the midst of your consciousness.

Suddenly, as thoughts drop away, you discover you are
living in the conscious awareness of Eternity - you have
stepped out of the human belief in time.

You feel your own
Omnipresence - you have stepped out of the human belief
in space.

You silently commune with the Immortal One
that God manifested in the beginning before the world was.

you realize, that you have slipped out of the "parenthesis,"
and are once more dwelling in "the temple not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens."

Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven has entered your
consciousness, and the tabernacle of God is with men..

The instinctive faculty of animals and primitive men gives way in time to the thinking faculty of developed men who form concepts, invent words, and formulate phrases to accommodate what they try to express.

In time the habit of thinking conditions them as it gets more strongly seated.

When the need arises with further development for abstract thoughts, the words used tend to spread out their meaning, become more generalized and vague, and thus in a different way tend to limit consciousness still further.

If the consciousness is to free itself from these limitations it must probe words more semantically and cut into concepts with more precision.

This becomes important if the higher Truth becomes the object of a quest.

We act as the wrong identity when we act as the ego who possesses this consciousness called Life, and when we believe it is our personal property, the 'action' of a private mind.

We act this misidentity when we think of ourselves as one who is the recipient of Life.

We act the true identification when we reckon Identity to be Awareness (Life) itself.

We act the true identification when we declare that Awareness itself is being this Identity-I-am, when we act from the standpoint that Awareness only is being Identity-I, instead of the body- form which is merely the focal point of images within Awareness.

The heart of man, as the Sufis say, is a mirror. All that is reflected in this mirror is projected upon other mirrors. When man has doubt in his heart that doubt is reflected upon every heart with which he comes in contact. When he has faith that faith is reflected in every heart. Can there be a more interesting study and a greater wonder than to observe this keenly?

There must be no feeling of revenge, of unkindness, of bitterness against anyone in the heart. When such a feeling comes, one must say: this is rust coming into my heart. When all such feelings are cleared off the heart, it becomes like a mirror. A mirror without rust reflects all that is before it; then everything divine is reflected in the heart.

The heart aflame becomes the torch on the path of the lover, which lightens his way that leads him to his destination. The pleasures of life are blinding, it is love alone that clears the rust from the heart, the mirror of the soul.